Weightlifting & Exercise/Exercise

Advertisement

Expert: Daniel - 9/9/2014

QuestionGood day,
I am 33 years old male from India.I work out at home as I don't get time for gym due to shift duties. For my workout I have a pair of 13.5 and 15 pound dumbbells.I only do curls, a chest exercise that includes moving the arms across chest horizontally holding the weights(butterfly maybe?). I do around 4 sets with 30 repetitions for curls and 4-5 with 40 for chest exercise.I start with around 150 pushups.I workout twice for 3 days and once for forth day.For rest of the week I only do pushups as I don't have the time.My question is this appropriate or more than necessary?Also recently I have started feeling a pain in the elbow area and the part of the forearm near elbow feels stiff and muscles also feel hard.Should I stop working out altogether or reduce the load.Also what should I do for the pain?For now I have stopped working with the weights and do around 50-60 hindu puishups twice a day.

AnswerHey Sumeet. It sounds from what you are telling me that you are doing too much chest and triceps work. I would suggest you do less and also do a proper warm up with doing chest and triceps stretches into your routine. For pain the best thing you can do is get advice from a doctor. I would suggest to reduce the activity in the mean time, it looks like the excessive amounts of push ups, chest exercises is contributing to that.

Keep track of what you are doing and how many times per week you are training, how many exercises you are doing and what body parts you are training. Try to have something balanced. For example 8-10 exercises whole body will be a good start for a training program. To make things easier I like to use the F I T T Principle and I can explain what that is.

F= Frequency ( ask yourself how many times per week you are training)
I= Intensity ( how hard are the exercises you are doing?)
T= Type ( What is the kind of exercises you are doing, isolated, dynamic, strength?)
T= Time ( How long are your exercise sessions, how long do you rest between sets?)

You said you exercise twice for 3 days and one time on the fourth day. So perhaps you can reduce your exercise sessions and do them 3 times a week of only 1 time per day. See if that helps. So frequency would be
F= 3 times a week

Intensity= how hard is your training? It looks like 4 sets for curls and 4-5 sets for 40 reps is working for endurance. You can increase the weight so that you get fatigued and only be able to do 10-12 repetitions with proper form before not being able to do anymore. This is called Volitional fatigue. Try to decrease the sets to 3 sets instead of 4 and see if that helps.

Type= The type of exercises. Ok your doing Chest flys ( the one you called butterfly) maybe we can do regular dumbbell chest press. Try to vary your exercises every 3-4 weeks to avoid possible over use injuries. This occurs when you keep doing the same thing over and over and not changing things up.

T= Time. How long are your training sessions. Usually a training session should be between 45minutes to an hour. Make sure they are purposeful and that you don't take too much time taking rest breaks. Between sets for prepositions that cause you to get fatigued at 12 or more reps take 45 seconds to 1 minute break. For sets of repetitions that make you fatigued at 6-12 reps take 1.5 minutes break.

I hope this helps. The best thing I can recommend is see a doctor first to rule out anything else and second start to make a program sheet so you can keep track. The 3rd thing I suggest is to slowly increase the intensity week by week, depending how you feel. It your arm is bothering you start to do a little less in that week. If it still continues to hurt, change the exercise or make the exercise easier. Try to vary it.

Daniel

Expertise

Experience

I train primarily athletes and regular people who need to get back in a fitness routine.

OrganizationsNSCA; The National Strength and Conditioning Association
ACSM; The American College of Sports Medicine
CSEP; The Canadian Society of Exercise Physiology
NASM; The National Academy of Sports Medicine

PublicationsCheck here at www.fit2assist.com for further information on how to start building yourself, improve your body and live better.

Education/CredentialsI am an Exercise Scientist & Strength and Conditioning coach with 6 specializations/credentials,
- Strength Conditioning Specialist with the National Strength and Conditioning Association, primarily dealing with athletic performance training.
- Corrective Exercise specialist (CES) and Sports Performance Coach (PES) with the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
- An Health fitness Specialist with the American College Of Sports Medicine
- An Exercise Physiologist with CSEP.
-TRX Group Qualified instructor.